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Math Genius Has Come Up With a Wildly Simple New Way to Solve Quadratic Equations:
If you studied algebra in high school (or you're learning it right now), there's a good chance you're familiar with the quadratic formula. If not, it's possible you repressed it.
By this point, billions of us have had to learn, memorise, and implement this unwieldy algorithm in order to solve quadratic equations, but according to mathematician Po-Shen Loh from Carnegie Mellon University, there's actually been an easier and better way all along, although it's remained almost entirely hidden for thousands of years.
In a 2019 research paper, Loh celebrates the quadratic formula as a "remarkable triumph of early mathematicians" dating back to the beginnings of the Old Babylonian Period around 2000 BCE, but also freely acknowledges some of its ancient shortcomings.
"It is unfortunate that for billions of people worldwide, the quadratic formula is also their first (and perhaps only) experience of a rather complicated formula which they must memorise," Loh writes.
[...] We still don't know how this escaped wider notice for millennia, but if Loh's instincts are right, maths textbooks could be on the verge of a historic rewriting - and we don't take textbook-changing discoveries lightly.
"I wanted to share it as widely as possible with the world," Loh says, "because it can demystify a complicated part of maths that makes many people feel that maybe maths is not for them."
The research paper is available at pre-print website arXiv.org, and you can read Po-Shen Loh's generalised explanation of the simple proof here.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @07:54PM (1 child)
I've come to the opinion that success as a student is partly determined by raw talent but partly determined by how well your teachers can communicate in a way that's meaningful to you. My dad had his bachelor's degree in math, and in one on one discussions at home he could explain clearly. I breezed through math in school. My classmates who only had the mediocre teachers and their own parents who couldn't explain the material as well struggled. I didn't have more talent, I was just lucky.
I'm not sure I can judge the educational value of this formula fairly, I learned the standard one decades ago. I would want a fresh set of eyes on the problem - not mine (someone biased towards the status quo just because it's familiar), and not the person who proposed using this one either (someone who at least appears to be biased in favor of doing something different just for its own sake).
I also agree that teaching these skills in school may not be that useful. I've heard the argument, "If you can learn advanced math, you can learn anything". But school should be about more than drilling facts into a kid's skull, it should be about teaching critical thinking and fostering a life long interest in learning. There have got to be more engaging things to learn, in and out of mathematics.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:56PM
Its worth pointing out that my wife could handle math so she did STEM degree so I eventually met her at a STEM employer and eventually married etc. Meanwhile my SiL couldn't handle math, so she went for a K12 educator degree instead of STEM, and she's been teaching math to the next generation of STEM students for more than a quarter century. So the sister who knows math designs and implements the call center queuing statistical analysis formulas in your PBX firmware, but doesn't teach anyone math, whereas the sister who couldn't learn math is teaching math. Hmm.
Given the extreme income disparity between something like a BSEd vs BSCS or BSEE, I would think anyone who can pass calculus is almost certainly not teaching kids math, which in the long term would seem to be a problem for the next generation of calculus learners.
I'm not sure if its good or bad news that the district curriculum is so detailed and specific that she's practically reading prepared materials to the kids or showing approved multimedia all day rather than actually teaching in the traditional sense of 1 on 1 learning. In a similar sense I don't know anything about playing Rugby, but given an authoritarian micromanaged enough school district curriculum I could "teach" rugby by word for word reading of the school district issued mandatory rugby textbook, and accidentally some kids might learn rugby from "me" in the sense that they heard me create a live audiobook presentation of the textbook they probably wouldn't read on their own without me crack'n the whip on them.